Love in the Time of COVID

by EB Messineo When I think of COVID, I think of arms outstretched & flapping & empty as the nest where the ospreys used to roost: a hug from a distance. My grampy knows he should stay home, just as he knows when the herring will run, and how to nurture an aloe to 4ft indoors, and that Grammy is wondering what’s taking him so long. His voice: “I brought two stuffed quahogs — one for you and one for your mother.” He stands — an island in our living room — surgical mask a ghostly hand stifling the truth his eyes speak so openly: six feet and the risk of a vent will always be better than the crushing silence of an empty house. He lifts his arms, a crucifix mirror of my own mimed embrace. He says “my dahlin’” the way he always has — a man who spent a lifetime building things that last only to mournfully outlast them all. He still keeps Grammy’s pink hat on the passenger side of his old Crown Vic. Fact: the sea without the taste of salt is just a bathtub. Fact: knowing her name is not the same as knowing the five-freckle constellation of the little dipper just above her left breast. Fact: Joyce wrote “An old servant was sweeping at the end of the landing” — I read “weeping” and it was the most important accident of my day because I felt something. Fact: a hug from a distance is not a hug, but it’s better than just distance. Fact: all of this is necessary but still it hurts.